-Hindustan Times Gross domestic product (GDP) statistics are released at both current and constant prices. The latter discounts inflation (more on this later) from the Base year of the current GDP series. Let’s assume it takes a tonne of steel to build half a kilometre of road. Let’s also assume steel costs ₹1,000 a tonne and there is a tax of 10% on steel. Now, if steel prices doubled in a year,...

-The Telegraph The country has an advantage that many people have two vaccines plus a past infection: Expert Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan who has been tracking India’s Covid-19 epidemic for nearly two years, is now visiting her parents’ farmhouse in Ruppur near Santiniketan in Birbhum. “This is our escape and solace in the epidemic,” she said. In this interview, Mukherjee tells The Telegraph what she expects...

-Down to Earth There were 5.18 excess deaths per 1,000 people in Chennai between March 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021: The Lancet India’s poor disease surveillance measures during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have made it hard to gauge the burden of mortality. A study, published in The Lancet in December 2021, looked at all-cause mortality in Chennai and found 5.18 excess deaths per 1,000 people between March 1, 2020...

-Factly.in In our first story on ‘hate speech’ cases, it was observed that the number of cases booked under Sections 153A & 153AA has been increasing over the years. While the cases have increased, the disposal rates of both the police & courts have come down leading to increased pendency. Even in cases whose trial is complete between 2016 & 2020, the conviction rate was only around 20%.  In the previous story,...

-Hindustan Times 2021 was supposed to be the year of the decadal census in India. This exercise has not been delayed even once until 2011 since 1881, when India conducted its first full census. Every day, the data and political economy team of the Hindustan Times brings you stories we call Number Theory. They are based on databases from India and sometimes even abroad. We will continue to do this in the...